Of course, back then it was said it would never be bettered, but John Francome, Peter Scudamore and Richard Dunwoody all came along and raised the bar by what now seem relatively trifling amounts.

However, when McCoy eventually finally hangs up his boots that bar will be permanently out of anyone’s reach.

This time the old platitude “we will never see his like again” will be entirely accurate; only if scientists get a shift on with cloning might it ever be equalled.

What is truly remarkable about McCoy is that, at 39 and old enough to be the father of many of his weighing-room colleagues, he shows no sign of slowing down.

He has yet to be hit by the realisation – which crept up swiftly on Scudamore and Francome but not Dunwoody, who was stopped by the doctor – that there is more to life than riding horses and that the risks outweigh the rewards, both mental and financial.

Last week when racing was abandoned at Bangor on Monday, rather than gracefully accepting a rare day off, McCoy spent the morning, no matter that not many planes were flying anyway, trying to get on a flight to continue his quest for winners at Galway. To his great annoyance he failed.

And as much as that unremitting drive keeps him going, perhaps the most remarkable, unworldly thing about McCoy – and a major contributory factor in his quest for 4,000 winners – is his relationship with pain, his ability to block it out and to ride on through it.

That is one barrier that has never stopped him, indeed he seems to thrive on confrontations with it, suppressing it and conquering it.

The injuries we, the public, know about are far outweighed by the ones he has kept quiet, both from doctors and the rest of us.

The red entries in his medical book are like the complete works of Shakespeare, minus Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet and his sonnets.

McCoy rides on with injuries – smashed ribs, wrists and collar bones – that might keep those not so passionately in love with their jobs and a bit softer off work for three months.

He may pay the price for that in old age but what must McCoy think when he sees that advert on television which asks: “Have you had an accident at work?”

McCoy remains so far clear of the opposition that there really is no need for him to stop in the immediate future.

Indeed his young colleagues seem in awe of him and it is almost as if he now has some kind of psychological hold over them, which makes them prone to small but crucial tactical mistakes when they get into duel with him.